I Am Lazarus Back from the Dead...

Or at least Sarah back from the end of the quarter, and I'm back to start blogging again.  Much as I would like to say that I am moved by pure love of self expression, I will cop to actually being moved by the plaints of my reading public (such as it is).  Now that I am no longer putting sixty hour weeks in the studio, but am instead seeking summer employment (that does not involve me standing on concrete for hours straight*) and putting up a portfolio online, I have time to bend my ear to their requests.

Tonight there is experimental curry on the stove.  Well not terribly experimental, except for the apple I threw in on a whim.  Apple?

I keep forgetting that Gala apples are not my idea of pomaceous delight.  Not even close.  They may be almost the same color as Braeburns and Fujis, but they lack the snap and crispness that makes them favorites, and they cook poorly.  Under those circumstances the apples become some sort of sweet secondary vegetable, and thus into a curry that is already going to play host to cauliflower, an onion, garlic, and a tomato (as well as lentils and rice and some left over chicken). 

But that's not why I'm writing this.  I am writing this because I made gluten free, dairy free brownies that weren't entirely awful AND DID NOT REQUIRE ME TO BUY XANTHAN GUM.  Also the texture wasn't bad.**

Black Bean Brownies

One 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed very well, preferably a brand that does not add onions to their black beans.  Alternatively one could make ones own black beans.  This one did not feel so moved.  Nor did she want to go buy new black beans after she opened the can and then realized that they had onions. So she ended up rinsing her black beans many times over and speaking of her actions in the third person. Even so, not too bad.
3 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil or more.  Next time I'm considering upping the oil. 
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon if you feel like it.  Or are trying to cover the taste of oniony beans. 
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts chopped

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease an 8"x 8" square baking pan, or a 9" round pan.  (Any guesses as to which I was using?)

 In a blender puree the beans with the eggs and vanilla extract until creamy. Then puree them a bit more.

In a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients (sugar, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, cinnamon).

Carefully fold the bean and egg mixture into the dry ingredients, then mix until totally incorporated.

Stir in the walnuts and chocolate chips, and scrape into the prepared pan.

Bake until only a couple of crumbs cling to a tester.  I started checking at 30 minutes, but the brownies came out at 40 minutes.

If you have the time, these definitely benefit from aging over night. 


* I have a most unholy love of working retail (I pretty much hate recreational shopping).  I like meeting people.  I like talking about things I enjoy.  I like selling people things that will make their lives better (for sometimes very abstract values of better).  I'm even good at it. My feet however have issued an ultimatum about me and standing on concrete floors for hours a day.  Since my feet are an integral part of my active and exciting lifestyle, I perforce must accept that sometimes desks are okay too. 

**I have a couple of people in my life who need things to be gluten free and dairy free (this pretty much rules out chocolate mousse, since I'm allergic to soy based dairy substitutes; likewise tortes that substitute chopped nuts for flour were likewise out, because I hate chopping all those nuts by hand). I prefer to be able to accommodate them.  Preferably with things that are acceptable to not so restricted eaters. Texture is the area where gluten free desserts often fall down.  So when I find something that works for everyone I get all excited.

Rumors to the contrary, I am still alive

April may not be the cruelest month, but it certainly was a busy one.  I spent a lot of it eating beans and rice and things out of boxes.  So nothing exciting to talk about food wise.  Except to say that my second favorite breakfast after eggs and sausage is a big slice of Yorkshire pudding with jam.  But most of this month my breakfasts have mostly been a gigantic cup of coffee or two, and a peanut butter and honey sandwich if I remember to pack a spare.

So, I've been keeping myself busy with school and friends and family, and there was a holiday in there, and then my brother graduated from college, and I went home to Alaska for the big event, and suddenly it's May and I haven't posted to my blog in a month, and people are starting to send me emails wanting to know the reason why.  AND I still have not made the definitive rhubarb custard.  Oh well.

Well, actually there is one recent recipe worth sharing, and it's a good one.

Last week, one of my college friends turned thirty.  To assist her in dealing with the shock of it all, I took a small vat of eggplant dip to her birthday party.  She is sensitive to wheat and deals poorly with members of the chili family.  So most recipes for eggplant dip were unsuitable in that they called for bread as an ingredient and/or chilis or bell peppers.


But I wanted eggplant dip.  So I improvised.

Eggplant Olive Dip

1 1lb eggplant, halved lengthwise and the flesh scored in a crosshatch pattern.
2 medium tomatoes halved
Olive oil
1 or 2 or several cloves of garlic minced, smashed, or otherwise rendered blender friendly
1/4 cup or so kalamata olives or other brine cured olives
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375.

Rub the cut sides of the eggplant with olive oil.  Rub the tomatoes with olive oil. Rub a shallow baking pan with olive oil.  Place the eggplant and tomatoes cut sides down in the pan and slide it into the oven.  Leave it alone for fifty minutes or an hour, until everything is roasted and delicious smelling.

When time is up, allow the veggies (fruit actually, but never mind) to cool, so that you don't burn yourself when you strip the flesh from the eggplant peel and dump everything including the garlic and olives in a food processor or blender or food mill or whatever.

Add a healthy dribble of olive oil.  I think I used a tablespoon, and puree by your favorite method. 

Transer to a suitable container and stick in the fridge over night to allow the flavors to develop.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve with pita wedges or toast or use as a sandwich spread.  It's marvelous with cheese, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches.

Winter Is Over and Past!

I woke up this morning and I wanted out.  Birds were singing and delicious smells of earth and flowers were coming in my window.  Two of my cousins are in Everett this weekend instead of Palo Alto and Iowa, so I had planned on going up north shortly after breakfast.  Which is fine.  But I've spent many of my last several weekends being social and I wanted some time to be me... in silence.  Fortuitously, my aunt called and said everyone was moving slowly, so maybe we could meet up before dinner?

Suited me fine.  I went and washed my hair and took out the recycling and then I went for a walk.  For a couple of hours I walked over north Cap Hill taking pictures (and figuring out the rudimentary manual controls on my camera) and breathing.  Volunteer park was filled with families.  The koi in the koi ponds looked particularly handsome. The reservoir glowed deep teal.  The crows were raucous in their delight with the day, and I kept fighting the urge to write Anglo-Magic-Realist short stories in the mode of A.S. Byatt-- all about a woman who lives in a city by an inland sea and communes with the wise fish who hear all the secrets of lovers who sit by their pond.  (If I develop an actual plot rather than a handful of images I may yet follow through.)  Anyway, everything seemed alive and suffused with joy and intelligence. 

On my way home I stopped at the grocery store and bought a pound of rhubarb for to make a something or other to augment the raspberry cheese cake brownies (recipe coming later, if I think it's worth while) I made last night, before I remembered that one of my cousins has given up chocolate for Lent.  I had been thinking idly of rhubarb upside down cake, but I didn't have enough butter.  Ditto the rhubarb crisp idea.  Eventually I settled on a rhubarb custard.  Except no where could I find a recipe for what I wanted.  At least, not under that name. 

Eventually I adapted a recipe for rice pudding of all the peculiar things, and I offer it here to you all.

Rhubarb Custard

4 cups of chopped rhubarb.  This is somewhat less than a pound, but extra rhubarb has never been a problem for me.
1 1/2 cup whole milk
2/3 cup + 1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp muscato (it's a light sweet white wine, which could probably be omitted, but I had it so I used it)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease a souffle dish (I would suggest an 8"x8" baking dish or 9" deep pie plate, but all I had that did not already have baked goods in it was the aforementioned souffle dish), and toss in the rhubarb.  Toss the rhubarb with 1 Tbsp sugar and the moscato.  Set aside.

In a heavy bottomed sauce pan bring the milk to a simmer.

While you are waiting on the milk, whisk together the rest of the sugar, , the eggs, the vanilla, the cinnamon and the salt. If the milk simmers while all this whisking is going on, remove it from the heat.

Gradually add the hot milk to the egg mixture while stirring continuously.

Pour over the custard and bake at 350 until puffed and golden and set.  Details on the timing of this when it comes out of the oven.  I went to about an hour and ten minutes, before allowing it to continue cooking in the oven with the heat off. 

I used more moscato than what I outline above, and it was too much.  Between the extraneous moscato and the liquid the rhubarb is throwing off, there is too much liquid in the dish.  The smell is intoxicating, but the evidence suggests that the texture may be less than perfect. Some of this trouble could have been avoided by baking the custard in a shallower dish with more surface area, and placing it in a water bath. 

On further exploration most people will probably want more sugar than I used, and possibly less rhubarb.  Next time.  For there is going to definitely be a next time. 

You Know You're in Alaska When...

Women in jeans and opera-worthy fur coats at the grocery store are one of those quintessentially Alaskan sights. Then there is the backlog of seafood given to us by friends in my parent's freezer. I've been having fun with salmon this week. I'm afraid that the recipes I'm about to relay are not cheap as written, unless you have friends with salmon fishing "problems". (One can explore canned salmon for example.) On the other hand, both of them do use leftovers.

I served the salmon cakes, along some bean soup and salad, to friends who came over for a Scrabble game.

Salmon Cakes with Feta

vegetable oil
1 cup finely chopped onion (or one medium onion)
1 1/2-ish pounds salmon "burger meat" -- that is the skinned trimmings from filets and steaks. One could use a filet, but that seems like overkill. If you don't happen to have a pound or two of salmon odds and ends, I would definitely explore the canned option. Or one could use cheaper fish (and a different cheese).
3 slices of bread, crusts cut off
1/2 a cup of milk
OR a cup and a half of leftover mashed potatoes (Which is what I used -- making these cakes friendly for people with wheat issues)
2 tsp dried dill or 2 Tbsp fresh
a dash of garlic powder
A squeeze of lemon juice, salt, ground black pepper, cayenne to taste
Chunks of feta

Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Sauté untill golden, stir them every few minutes to prevent burning. This will take somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen minutes.

If one does not have leftover mashed potatoes, tear up the bread into small chunks and place it in a small bowl with the milk, and let it soak for five minutes while you're doing other things.

While the bread is soaking and the onions turning golden, you will be breaking up the fish witha fork. When it's the consistency of tuna salad, wring out the bread, and add it along with the onions, the egg, the lemon juice, and other seasonings. (If you aren't using bread and milk, obviously you just skip the whole rigamorale and dump in the mashed potatoes.)

Form the salmon mixture into patties roughly four inches across. Layer on a large plate using waxed paper to separate the layers, and refrigerate for an hour to give them time to set up. (I think I ended up with eleven cakes last time.) In an emergency one can skip the chilling, but the cakes are more annoying than necessary to work with.

Preheat the oven to 350. (Or not, these are nice fried.)

If one is going to bake the cakes one ought to bake them for twenty five minutes, turning them at the mid-point and sprinkling them with a layer of feta.

Or one can fry them in oil at four minutes a side. Or one can bake them half way and finish them by frying.

Either way, they are tasty either by themselves, or as part of a sandwich.

Two apiece for adults seems to be the right number, if one is not serving them as sandwiches. If I were serving them as sandwiches, I would serve them in pita bread with tomatoes, lettuce, and tzatziki, or tahini and humus, or mayo if I didn't feel like making the former, and didn't have tahini and humus in the house.

After the night of Scrabble and salmon cakes, I had a cake left over. This evening I was rummaging through the kitchen in search of dinner for my parents and I. I found the salmon cake and some whole wheat pasta and the feta again. The result was uncommonly tasty.

Baked Penne with Salmon and Tomatoes

1 cup-ish whole wheat penne pasta or other suitable pasta, which is to say that members of the fettucini and spaghetti families are out.
2/3 cup milk or cream (I used 1%, but it would have been better with whole milk, and decadent with cream)
1 or 2 eggs (I used 1, but in retrospect I wished I'd used 2, especially with 1% milk)
1 1/2 - 2 tsp dried dill -- it so happens that I really like dill, if you don't-- a mixture of tarragon, oregano, and parsley, or any of them singly would be delish too. Mint also has its possibilities if one is feeling adventurous.
a couple of drops of hot sauce -- optional
a dash of nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp tomato paste (tomato paste in tubes is one of the better inventions of the twentieth century)
1/2 c minced onion
3/4 c finely diced tomatoes
1 leftover salmon cake (or other deck of cards sized piece of flavorful fish -- one could use rather less smoked salmon if one had that on hand)
1 c grated extra sharp cheddar -- may I recommend the Tillamook?
1 c feta

Preheat the oven to 350

Prepare the pasta according to the directions, especially if it's whole wheat pasta. I like normal pasta al dente. Whole wheat pasta al dente is like unto sawdust. This dish is not liquid enough to cover any pasta deficiencies, so go ahead and cook the whole wheat pasta for 13 minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, butter a medium size gratin dish.

Mix together everything on the ingredients list from the milk to the tomato paste. It will take some concerted beating to get the tomato paste to incorporate. Oh well.

Chop up the tomato and onion. You might mix them together, or even mix them together with the crumbled fish. Yes, you want to crumble the fish. There is not a lot of fish in the dish and you want the flavor to get around.

When the pasta is drained, spread half of it in a thin layer across the bottom of the baking dish.
Cover that layer with the tomatoes, onions, salmon, and half of the cheeses. Cover this layer with the other half of the pasta. Spread on the rest of the cheese. Pour the milk and egg mixture over the mound of goodness.

Bake for forty minutes, or until everything is bubbly and not too liquid.